Optical network service provisioning for multicast and groupcast communications

This dissertation investigates the problems of service provisioning to support bandwidth-intensive multicast and groupcast communications in optical networks.; Multicast is a point-to-multipoint communication paradigm. In optical multicast, optical signal power loss occurs due to light splitting and signal propagation attenuation. To guarantee the fairness of received signal quality at various destinations of a multicast group, loss-balanced optical multicast is required. This dissertation studies the problem of loss-balanced optical multicast using loss-balanced light-forests in sparse light-splitting and sparse wavelength-conversion optical networks. The problem was formulated as an optimization problem using integer linear programming (ILP). Numerical solutions to the optimization model supply useful performance bounds of constrained optical multicast in sparse light-splitting and sparse wavelength-conversion optical networks.; Efficient optical multicast requires light splitters and wavelength converters properly configured in optical networks. This dissertation studies the network planning problem of combined light splitter placement and wavelength converter placement to facilitate the optical multicast service provisioning. Optimization and heuristic approaches are proposed to solve the combined problem in static traffic cases and dynamic traffic cases. Optimization and simulation results prove the close relationship of light splitter placement and wavelength converter placement in optical multicast.; Groupcast is a multipoint-to-multipoint communication paradigm, where more than one member in a multicast group can simultaneously send traffic at various rates to all other members of the group. This dissertation studies the problem of optical groupcast by using in-group traffic grooming: traffic streams from members of the same group are groomed in an effective way before being delivered to their common destinations, subject to the following constraints. First, the bandwidth summation of the aggregated traffic streams should not exceed the bandwidth of a wavelength channel. Second, the wavelength-continuity constraint should be observed, except at switch nodes where grooming operations are performed. For delay-constrained groupcast problem, the maximum number of grooming operations along any route should also be constrained to satisfy the required QoS specification.